Books Featuring Ilona

Job-Search & Career-Management Trends & Forecasts

–Text from Career Thought Leaders Consortium “Findings of 2010 Global Career Brainstorming Day: Trends for the Now, the New & the Next in Careers.”

CareerXRoads 2010 survey pinpoints sources of hire. Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler from CareerXRoads publish an annual Sources of Hire survey of Fortune 500 companies. Their 2010 study showed that, of all external hires, 26.7% came from referrals, 22.3% from employer career sites, 13.2% from job boards, and the remainder from other sources. As in years past, the largest number of new hires came from referrals. These are today’s results and what we anticipate for tomorrow.

Other statistics reveal interesting hiring trends. Following are statistics that were shared during various Brainstorming Day sessions in both the US and Canada. Not all of these stats are verifiable nor attributed to a particular individual or organization, so read them with that in mind.

At least 65% of all new hires come as a result of networking.

Up to 80% of all new hires come as a result of networking.

Recent Wall Street Journal survey showed 95% of positions were found through networking and leads through people the job seekers knew.

90% of all corporations upload resumes and do keyword searches to identify qualified candidates.

80% of recruiters are using social media to recruit candidates.

Contract, temporary, and interim opportunities are soaring. Never before in the history of our industrialized world has there been such a demand for 1099 workers (so-called because corporations report payments to these workers via IRS Form 1099). Quite often, these workers are individuals with a unique expertise (e.g., telecommunications product design and commercialization, Asian market development, biomedical instrumentation). In years past, contract and interim opportunities were almost looked down on as though someone couldn’t get a “real job.” Today, these positions are the future where individuals control their own careers and are directly responsible for generating their own paychecks. Companies are just as eager to jump on the bandwagon because it reduces their corporate benefit and tax expenses while creating long-term flexibility because permanent employees are not added to the payroll.

Vocational and skilled trades jobs are in demand. There is a huge market today for plumbers, electricians, welders, and other skilled trades people yet, unfortunately, there still exists a stigma that those types of careers are not “enough.” As we continue to move through this economic recession, we hope that the perception of these careers will change to more accurately reflect the high pay scales, great benefits, and other perks of these professions. College isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay.

LinkedIn is THE online place to be seen. The consensus of career coaches, career counselors, resume writers, recruiters, outplacement consultants, and others who participated in Global Brainstorming Day is that LinkedIn is now the #1 online networking platform for job seekers, both active and passive. Some concern was expressed that job seekers are not currently devoting the amount of time necessary to write the well-branded and comprehensive LinkedIn profiles that are essential because LinkedIn is used daily by recruiters and hiring managers to find quality candidates. The only group of career professionals not quite as focused on LinkedIn were college and university career center directors, 9 who see a great deal of online employment action on Facebook and Twitter for their traditional young graduating students.

A minimum number of LinkedIn recommendations is important. One participant recommended that everyone on LinkedIn should strive to have a minimum number of recommendations equal to 10% of the number of their contacts. That indicates that many of us need to get to work asking for our own recommendations!

Online identities are more important than ever before. Your online identity used to be something that you could worry about later. Not now. The time to be concerned about your online identity is today as the vast majority of recruiters and companies will Google potential candidates or look them up on LinkedIn before initiating contact. Every single person – job seeker, happily employed worker, entrepreneur, CEO, consultant – must be dedicated to building a strong online presence that ties directly with their brand and/or their business.

It’s important to monitor online identity. If you want to know what others are finding out about you, Google yourself routinely – for job seekers, at least once a week. An easy and efficient way to keep an eye on this all-important online identity is to set up a Google alert to be notified whenever their name appears online. If they find digital dirt (negative things) about themselves, they should work very hard to move those Google results to page 3, at least. People can write blog posts, participate on LinkedIn and other social media sites, join online groups, and otherwise increase their digital footprint to populate their Google searches with favorable information.

Jim Johnson meet Jim Johnson meet Jim Johnson. How many Jim Johnsons do you think there are in the US? In the world? This fact complicates the entire online identity management process. Fortunately, today offers a solution with Search-Me Google technology developed by Vizibility.com. This new tool allows a person to pre-set the top five results that appear on Google when someone clicks on the Search-Me button that they can add to an email signature line, online resume, LinkedIn profile, and other career communications. This technology is great for everyone, not just people with common names. Think of the power you have to control what people see first about you, your business, your college or university, your transition program, your workforce development center, or your outplacement company, not to mention all of your clients.

Participating in social media is a must. Having an account with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms is not enough today. To “be,” you must be seen, and that means posting frequently, commenting on others’ posts, joining groups, and otherwise actively engaging in online communities. If you think you don’t have time to do this – or if your clients think they don’t – consider some of the shortcuts. For example, update your LinkedIn status and you can set it to also appear on Facebook and Twitter. Use Tweetdeck to schedule tweets ahead of time.

–Text from Career Thought Leaders Consortium “Findings of 2010 Global Career Brainstorming Day: Trends for the Now, the New & the Next in Careers.”